Police Officer Involved Domestic Violence.
Lighting a candle of remembrance for those who've lost their lives to domestic violence behind the blue wall, for strength and wisdom to those still there, and a non-ending prayer for those who thought they had escaped but can't stop being afraid.

Custom Search

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

On Christmas Eve, three weeks after Nancy Sherman filed for divorce from her Englewood police captain husband Robert, she died of a bullet wound in the head, shot from Cpt. Sherman's snub-nosed .38 caliber police service revolver. In her divorce papers, Nancy said her husband had twice threatened her with a gun, holding it cocked to her head, had fired the gun in the house, that he was a heavy drinker who cursed at her, belittled her, and who was hitting her. On December 24th 1979 Cpt. Sherman called police around 4pm saying he was wakened by a gun shot and found his wife dead. Based on that, Bergen County Prosecutor Roger Breslin called the death an apparent suicide. Cpt Sherman said he didn't kill his wife and said he could produce evidence to show "her propensity and inclination to commit suicide." Nancy's 30 year old daughter from a previous marriage, Nancy Luginbill, flew in from California and successfully sued to stop Cpt. Sherman from cremating her mother and to order a 2nd autopsy. Due to her efforts a Grand Jury inquiry began on February 20th of 1980, Cpt. Sherman "retired" March 1st, and he was indicted for Nancy Sherman's murder on April 2nd. On April 3rd around 5:30 a.m., 5 hours before he was to be arraigned for killing his wife, the retired captain Sherman shot and killed himself at his first wife Katherine's house, where he had been staying for 2 months. Nancy Sherman, mother of adult children, worked at the Bendix Corporation in a high skill job assembling delicate electronic wiring for the circuit boards of airplane cockpits - and she made nearly all of her own clothes. Cpt. Sherman was a 25 year veteran of the department and the head of it's Detective Bureau.